Jumping Jehoshaphat into Number 10
A story from the Book of Kings shows the lonely Christian duty of speaking truth to power, writes George Pitcher
This will come as no surprise to those who read it regularly, but sometimes ancient scripture chimes just perfectly with what’s happening around us today – and by “today”I mean this very day, the one we’re in, rather than its regular meaning of “our modern times”.
When it happens, it makes me smile on the train. It can be a line from a psalm: “I was envious of the proud; I saw the wicked in such prosperity”. Or a gospel injunction: “Whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”, which speaks directly and pretty unequivocally to the UK government’s recent train-crash of an economic policy.
Jehoshaphat
This week in the Anglican lectionary – and surprisingly, for me at least – it comes from the first book of Kings. The King of Judah, Jehoshaphat, is making common cause with Ahab, king of Israel, to throw occupiers out of an area called Ramoth-Gilead, which has been annexed by King Aram (rather as Vladimir Putin has tried to annexe eastern Ukraine).
Israel’s Ahab is in the habit of consulting his prophets about this sort of thing, so he summons a bunch of them – some 400 – and they all tell him it’s a terrifically good idea, God will deliver him what he wants and he should get on with it. Jehoshaphat asks if there’s any contrary opinion. Ahab says there’s a chap called Micaiah – but he hates him, because he’s always predicting disaster.
Jehoshaphat, in a fit of BBC-style impartiality, insists he is called. Micaiah delivers some good news: Ramoth-Gilead will indeed be won. But Israel’s people will be scattered and Ahab will be killed. “See?” says Ahab to Jehoshaphat (I paraphrase), “he only gives me a bad vibe.” Micaiah, who is attacked by all the prophets who tell the king what he wants to hear, more of less responds: “Like it or lump it.” So they go into battle and, of course, Micaiah’s prediction is vindicated.
Cabal
By now, you’ll have seen where this is going. Recent UK governments – certainly those of Boris Johnson and that of the current prime minister, Liz Truss – have listened to a cabal of those who tell them what they want to hear and ignored or even ostracised those of a different opinion, who may well be right. In some cases, these cabals are quite small – one thinks of Johnson and the Cummings clique – or rather bigger, such as the European Research Group and the right-wing of the Tory party, which might represent the kind of number that King Ahab was guided by.
In the case of Truss, many of those voices will have been guided by the same motivation as Ahab’s sycophantic counsellors – they want to keep their jobs, to be treated favourably and to have their way, whatever the consequence of the prospects before them. As such, they are enablers of the disastrous economic folly perpetrated by Truss and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, just as much as the 400 prophets who sent Ahab into battle.
Truth to power
Micaiah speaks truth to power, which is an altogether more demanding and respectable position. To that sort of behaviour Ahab, like Truss, responds that he is not “one of us”, which in Truss’s case means someone who helped to get her elected and tells her what she wants to hear. That’s why real experience and talent, such as that of Michael Gove and Rishi Sunak, are missing from the government benches, just as Johnson’s cabinet was stuffed with seventh-raters whose only purpose was to back him blindly.
But Micaiah serves to set a further example beyond simply serving the truth. Until some time after the Second World War, the spiritual and ethical consensus in Britain was a Christian one. So it was customary for political policy to be at least informed by the faith of our national Church, established in law, with its principal and principled bishops sitting by right in the upper house of our legislature.
Secular society
Now, we are constantly told, we live in a secular society. This doesn’t have its original Enlightenment meaning of a society in which everyone is treated equally under the law, but that the law should be framed exclusively by the ungodly and the unchurched.
Whatever one’s opinion on this development – whether one cheers or prays in response to it – it means that those of a Christian faith, in power or not, are likely to haver become a Micaiah, rather than one of the overwhelming consensus, motivated by their own self-interests. Which puts the words of the psalm, with which I opened this column, into our mouths.
The only way we can respond is with the kind of gospel exhortation with which I counterbalanced that psalm verse. But let’s not fool ourselves, for like John the Baptist we are voices crying out in the wilderness, rather than a majority Church guiding its people, through their parliament. We’re all Micaiah now.
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest
A version of this column appeared on PremierChristianity